THE COALESCENT PROCESS WITH SELFING

A method for estimating the selfing rate using DNA sequence data was r ecently proposed by Milligan. Unfortunately, a number of errors make i nterpretation of his results problematic. In the present paper we firs t show how the usual coalescent process can be adapted to models that include selfing, and then use this result to find moment estimators as well as the likelihood surface for the selfing rate, s, and the scale d mutation rate, theta. We conclude that, regardless of the method use d, large sample sizes are necessary to estimate s with any degree of c ertainty, and that the estimate is always highly sensitive to recent c hanges in the true value.